The Cave
by shnickers
Summary: One heiress and one traitor trapped in a cave with an immeasurable amount of emotional baggage... equals love? Hardly. SasuHina


_Naruto and associated characters, place, paraphernalia, etc. are all the brainchild of one Kishimoto Masashi. No credit is taken where it is not due._

* * *

**Prologue**

_day four__, day five_

It was in indescribable pain, with arms wrapped tightly around her abdomen that she haphazardly flew between the trees, treaded sandals barely keeping her from slipping on rain-slicked moss. And while the weak part of her—the majority—desperately wanted an excuse, any excuse, to just prostrate herself helplessly on the ground and do her best to expend emotion and this gritty, itchy feeling of utter self-frustration, years of training and practice and disappointed faces kept her body upright and twisting impossibly.

Low on energy and lower still on chakra, she allowed her body to run on its last reserves, utilizing what determination she had to carry out her last promise. She knew she would ache all over, _was _aching, legs trembling and shaking with the effort. But she would do it. "I'm sorry," she gasped and panted, drowning in regret and raindrops. Over and over, "I'm sorry."

Words that rung so hollow in a forest that didn't care, one moment used to pardon her clumsiness, the next to whisper regrets to a dead comrade. Words that hastened the flow of liquid down her cheeks.

The droplets cascading down her face were surprisingly salty.

The overwhelming scenery flashed by in muted greens and browns, colors diverging and centering somewhere on her optic nerve so strikingly that bile rose up. She swallowed reflexively, gagging as the discomfort and pain threatened to overwhelm her last vestiges of purpose and sanity. It hurt her eyes and heart to look at the life around her, bursting with vitality and strength, so she lowered her head and focused only on her winding path through the trees. She searched frantically for something to fill her thoughts and automatically began counting steps: _1, 2, 3, 4, 5…_

It was so frighteningly easy and mind-numbingly boring that her eyes glazed over as she punctuated each count with the sharp crunch of her sandals against wood. Some distant part of her noted, with a quiet, detached air, the short, gasping breaths that she swallowed and expelled, the grit between her toes as they pressed into her sandals, the wet drizzle plastering her hair and bangs uncomfortably to her neck and forehead, the needle-sharp prickle in her right wrist… But by the time each thought lazily curled around the edges of her mental barrier, another count rose up to forcefully push it away.

By _4,928_ the novelty had long faded away. Her body was intruding in on her mind, distracting her with its various aches and pains and causing her mind to stray down forbidden paths. As the burn in her abdomen quietly intensified, she couldn't help remembering the kick delivered to it that had made her temporarily lose her breath. She jerked a shaky hand up to wipe at the steady trickle of blood on her forehead and remembered the kunai tip that had created it. And when she blinked and shook her hair out of her face, she remembered the brutal yank that had caused her to scream out, that forced her to frantically slam a glowing palm into the flesh nearest to her, the stimulating rush of satisfaction as her opponent fell to the ground superseded by the paralyzing grip of fear that overcame her when she lifted her head to catch her breath…

She realized she had come to a complete standstill, digging the fingernails of one hand into rough tree bark and covering her mouth with the trembling fingers of the other. As she fought to keep from being swept away into the churning waves of emotion, some small part of her acknowledged that she _had to keep moving,_ she _couldn't stop_. It would be her downfall; guilt was already starting to paralyze her body and begin allowing the memories to poison her.

She took a deep breath, letting air seep through her nostrils and releasing it in a breathy sigh, repeating until she had successfully barricaded her heart from selfish emotions and agonizing thoughts.

_Stop. You don't have the luxury of breaking down. Move!_

She was flitting through the forest once more, speeding up as much as her tired legs would allow her. Things like the taut strain of her protesting muscles or the heavy weight of her eyelids that would normally distract her occupied her mind and kept it from straying. She allowed herself to feel the stretch and burn of her calves as they propelled her faster through the branches.

It was so addicting, this distraction, but she reminded herself that she needed it. That she was too weak without it.

She breathed in deeply once more in response to the familiar panic welling up inside of her. The air smelled of dirt and flora fresh after a light downpour, rich and earthy and reassuring. But she was picking up another scent, a tinny note that caused her face to twist in shock and disgust. Remembering the superficial wound on her forehead, she reached up to touch it with her fingers and came to a stumbling halt on the nearest branch.

Her hand.

Fat drops of rain water landed on the tips of her fingers and strained to remain in place until another drop would shake them free to run down her arm and drip off of her elbow. She followed one such drop with her eyes as it wound a murky crimson path down into the inner curve of her arm.

Blood.

She lifted her other hand and stared, as if in a trance, at the faded red smears streaking her palms and staining trails down her arms. Something inside her was screaming _look away, look away!_ But it was too late.

Her mind wandered freely, irresistibly, almost obsessively, drawn to the past and the memory of blood.

Blood dribbling from the corner of a mouth, the light in once exuberant eyes extinguished. Blood steadily growing in diameter from beneath the body, seeping into cloth and flecking his skin in bright red spatters. His blood on her arms, her face, her front. The acridity clogged up her nose and filled her mouth with such a vile metallic tang that the world before her burst into a colorful haze of nausea. The leaden weight in her head intensified with each detail and memory to the point where it was simply impossible to exist in her world of wretchedness.

And all the while, she kept staring entranced at her hands while her eyes rapidly blurred in and out of focus.

It was only physical pain that brought her back to reality, that slapped her awake and aware. She gasped as another twinge tore through her abdomen. The motion launched her forward at the waist; she automatically reached one hand out towards the trunk for stability and crouched in towards her stomach, breaking her self-induced hypnotic spell. The world was still spinning, even though she was standing as still as possible. She felt nauseous again as her abdomen continued tying itself into knots. She lurched suddenly, and her foot slipped on the wet bark, toppling her off the branch and sending her sprawling on the forest floor below.

Her cheek feverishly sought out the cool muddy ground as she cradled her belly with trembling hands. Tightening and squeezing; that was the only way she could describe the feeling, that intense clenching that left her shaky in its wake, hazy and emotional. Her eyes rolled up, automatically blinking as the last traces of the recent drizzle dropped onto her brow in a muted rhythm.

She couldn't think straight. If before her concentration had been honed in on one goal, one purpose, fervently blocking out the tragedy for fear that her world would turn itself upside down again, now her thoughts were so blank that it felt as though her mind had continued on her mad dash leaving her physical body behind. She tried desperately to seek out some semblance of herself, but the awful scenes kept flickering in and out of her head like someone was rapidly changing the frequency of her thoughts with the flick of a wrist.

The thread that was holding her together was perilously close to snapping.

She shook her head pathetically, smearing her face further into the mud, whispering nonsensical pleas that tapered into apologies and died out as excuses.

And then her lips formed his name.

The emotion she had been holding back since the moment she began her desperate flee rolled over her in waves. She trembled and sobbed and dug her nails into the flesh of her underarm and yet the horrible helplessness and guilt simply stood at bay, out of her reach where she couldn't strangle it and yet close enough that she could stare into its merciless eyes.

She wrapped her arms around her body and squeezed as hard as she could, trying senselessly to punish herself. Why was it that the guilty roamed free while the innocent suffered at their bloodstained hands? Why, even after three years of experience and one promotion did she continue to burden her teammates? Why… wasn't it _she _who was dead?

The physical pain decreased to the point where she was hardly aware of it, for the moment. And yet, she despaired: the one latch holding back the floodgates had broken, and she was being buried under a tide of overwhelming proportions. She unconsciously assumed the fetal position, and though years of discipline and cold eyes initially kept her body still, she failed her family's strict rules of conduct by repeatedly squeezing her knees to her chest. She was unable to stop the physical tears, which were puncturing her balloon of a heart. One prick and the air whooshed out in a frenzy, slowing steadily to only a trickle. One by one more holes were stabbed into her broken heart until she was left with a sagging shell of a soul.

It was minutes, hours, maybe even days later that she finally regained a tenuous hold on her sanity. The pain had started again, throbbing angrily in the pit of her stomach as if demanding attention and care. She was grateful for the distraction, but the masochist in her screamed for more emotional pain as well.

As the intensity of her emotions began to subside, she gave a little start when she realized how hard she had been crying. She hadn't cried this much since her mother had died. The word churned around in her head, reaching sinister fingers out to clutch and _squeeze_ her aching heart. _Yes, dead, dead, him and the other one, all dead, you killed them all…_

"I didn't mean to," she sobbed.

"_Intention is the rationale we give to redirect blame away from ourselves. Even the best intentions can have unfavorable consequences without properly thinking out all possible courses of action."_

"I know, but… I was never very good at that."

The forest was quiet, but she wasn't surprised. He didn't usually respond when she was self-pitying.

Her face felt cold, so she rolled onto her back and reached up to wipe the mud off with her damp jacket sleeve. She moved to wipe the mud off of her eyes, but left a small patch of it to crust over her forehead wound. Smiling darkly, she whispered to no one in particular, "It really doesn't work as well as actual medicine, you know…"

"_You're still using it, aren't ya?"_

"Because I don't have any medicine. I gave it to you, remember? But you're right. It _is_ handy."

Something fluttered onto her cheek, interrupting his next words. She opened her eyes slowly and the forest around her came into focus once again, bathed in the golden rays of the setting sun. But something was obscuring her sight…

She narrowed her eyes to squint at what appeared to be a small, shiny black beetle with amber wings that had mistaken her still, unmoving body for a safe place to rest. The irony didn't quite escape her, and she had the sudden, dreadful impulse to pinch it tightly.

It turned slightly on her cheek, and she could see the light and dark shaded stripes of brown running down its back in a woodwork pattern.

Suddenly an image came to her, of a boy and a girl, crouching together with their heads hunched over. His finger reaches down between them to gently prod at the ground. The girl stares at the unmoving thing with mangled legs, and glances back at his face.

"_What are we waiting for?"_

"_Hope."_

She remembered furrowing her brows together as she contemplates his words before suddenly amber wings spread and it takes off, albeit clumsily, to disappear in an instant.

His chin tilts up to follow it with his shaded eyes, and she watches as his defenses go down and the corners of his mouth tilt up.

_Hope,_ she now mouthed, as it flew away on amber wings.

Even though his real last words had been drastically different as they poured from his mouth, panic shining in his frenzied eyes, she cannot help but to hold on to this feeling with almost obsessive ferocity.

She lifted her head off of the ground, grimacing slightly at the dried mud and dirt clinging to half of her face. Without glancing at her hands, she carefully rubbed the blood off using fallen leaves and debris that transformed the reddish color murky with dirt.

For the first time that day, she felt… she _feels._ Maybe the world is still black around the edges, and maybe she needs to patch her heart before it can mend, but now she thinks she can continue struggling and fighting, never giving up on her path to becoming a better daughter, friend, sister, shinobi.

Lifting herself with shaky arms, she used a strong and sturdy tree trunk to support her wobbly steps. She suddenly remembered waiting by a hospital bed, smiling down at its comatose occupant as she listens to a story of hope and comaraderie that was more poignant than her twelve-year-old self could properly express. So she only said, _"That's…" _Across from her, he understands, though, he always understands. _"I know."_ She looks up at him to smile appreciatively and is stunned by the softness in his mouth, just now realizing how much more it affects him.

She bent down and sifted through the debris before straightening slowly, her hand gripping a short stick. With effort, she scraped a line into the tree, scratching deep enough to leave a noticeable mark and finishing off with two straight tails. It's appropriate, she decided, carving the line deeper. _I remembered, _it says. _I'm waiting._ If only her ulterior motives could remain buried, if the gesture could remain naïve and hopeful like theirs did years ago. But it can't quite hide the fact that she's desperately wishing away the alternative.

Nevertheless, the emptiness inside of her is submerging under the pressure of something more dangerous than despair in her fragile condition.

"Hope," she whispered, before setting off.

.

..

...

..

.

The sun had long since set and she could no longer see specks of dappled light breaking through the leafy rooftop. She narrowed her eyes in an unconscious effort to pierce through the darkness. Her well-honed mind calculated that shadow as safe, another as strange, and that one as suspicious, before shaking her head clear of stray thoughts.

It was strange, though. Even with paranoia lurking underneath her grip on sanity, she felt much more comfortable under the cover of night. Now she wasn't as easily detected. Her actions, her mistakes, her sins: the blood on her hands was now hidden from the naked eye on this moonless night.

Feeling physically better, regardless of the effects of her emotional breakdown and the strain on her health, she used her slowly accumulating chakra in periodic bursts that assisted her in performing leaps and bounds that were far past the limits of normal human capability. It was easy enough to be winding through the trees because her concentration was fully occupied on avoiding a collision, only stopping once every few minutes to scrape another line. But even with all the conclusions she had drawn concerning her actions and her thoughts, it was still a little tempting to just… take one tiny misstep and impact with that large oak or that medium-sized tree. Or spring a little closer to that thorn bush…

That innate desire to hurt herself, even if it was only to rightfully claim punishment with the bonus of distracting herself from the awful guilt, scared her.

In response to the rampant thoughts that she would rather keep locked away in the deepest, darkest parts of her heart, she tightened her focus, becoming so narrow-mindedly absorbed in her destination that all else became a blur. In fact, had her thigh muscles not suddenly started burning and had her lungs not began heaving with additional effort, she would never have realized that her focused path had taken her into the beginning incline of the mountains.

Here she paused, taking in labored breaths while surveying the surrounding foliage. She had left behind all of her belongings, including the compass she usually used to direct her path home. Without it and no idea which direction the sun had set, she might as well be wandering the deserts of Suna instead of the bountifully green forests of her Fire country. Suddenly she dully remembered these looming mountains as she and her companions had headed to their destination, as well as the insignificant pleasure she had taken in gazing upon the highest peaks in the west and the shrubby flora, all of which seemed so vitally important at that moment. She should be heading east along the base and then to the north, an approximate half-day journey, but her feet suddenly started moving as if in a trance, following the steep rise and fall of rock.

The hectic and panicked desire to return home had left, and she suddenly and selfishly wanted to put it off for as long as possible. She wanted to delay stepping through the wooden entrance gates and being forced to explain why she was alone. _If only he would hurry here…_

The truth was now dawning on her, eating away at her foolish hopes, taunting her for even having the audacity to desire being wrong about herself for once.

He was always much faster than she and had more endurance, and she had been walking haltingly the last few miles, heading straight for the mountains… She spun around, glancing blindly through the darkened trees, wishing desperately she could use her doujutsu. If only she had more chakra, if only she hadn't screamed, _if only she had_ _never suggested tracking them in the first place__!_

She rocked back on her feet, swallowing the guilt and misery again. _Useless._ She admitted that she just wanted to avoid seeing the realization and disgust well up in their faces as they began to comprehend. She imagined her beloved sensei's eyes widening in shock before narrowing in despair as she stared back at the person who singlehandedly destroyed her first genin team, the team she had put so much dedication, hard work and love into training. As strong as that woman was, now that her lover was gone and she was faced with the prospect of single parenthood in a career that disadvantaged women, her team was the only thing keeping her aloft. And it had all been taken away. No… _she_ had taken it all away.

She knew they would both completely break down. "I'm sorry," she whispered, her voice hoarse from disuse and her throat aching after hours of harsh breathing. "I can't keep my promise, I'm sorry, I'm sorry…"

The despair bubbled to the surface again.

One hand to her bruising heart, the other wrapped around her treacherous abdomen, she abandoned her wooden lifeline and began the exerting upward climb that suddenly forced her to her hands and feet as she maneuvered the steep incline and sharp angles of the mountainside. The combination of the dense tree cover and inky night sky left her stumbling and lurching at a toddler's pace, so slowly she wasn't even completely sure she was moving, but the extreme amount of physical effort it took her just to crawl at least forced her thoughts away for the moment.

She wasn't sure how long she continued on or even where she was going, but just kept on scrabbling at loose dirt and debris as she propelled herself forward on her hands and knees. She vaguely remembered the heavy feeling of her limbs as she struggled to lift one and move another, each movement blurring into the next. But seconds, minutes, hours later, she realized that she could _see_ again, even if it was only in blurs and varying shades of gray.

Pushing herself onto wobbly feet, she realized she had come farther than she thought, for the tightly knit canopy of trees had spread out to become sparse little bundles of shadow here and there. _The sun must be rising,_ she thought tiredly as she opted to bypass the steady upward rise and trailed to her left, following a somewhat level stretch of rock over to what must have been a sheer drop-off; she staggered slightly at the edge before managing to topple backwards onto her bottom. Breathing heavily as her pulse thudded dully in her ears, she crept forward onto her knees and peered down below.

She scanned the darkness in front of her. Finally spotting an outline of numerous dark splotches below her that twisted and twined together, her breath left her in a rush as she realized just how distant the tree covered ground appeared to be. _It had to be more than 2,000 miles!_

The haze that had settled in her head cleared slightly, and she couldn't help feeling more than a little nauseous. Her abdomen throbbed again, as if reminding her of her various aches and injuries. Realizing she was tilting slightly forward over the edge of the drop-off, she hurriedly leaned back and averted her eyes, which she closed groggily to rid herself of the dizziness.

Opening them slowly, she spotted the first rays of the sun hitting the surface of a trickling rivulet that gracefully flowed around a gathering of jutting boulders a couple of miles or so below and to her right. She followed the path of the stream with her eyes and saw it cut off into a miniature waterfall that stretched past where she could see from her current standpoint. Her throat ached immensely for a taste of what would most likely be cool, clear water, and before she could control herself, she moved forward until her legs dangled off the edge of the rock. She slowly slid to her right, using her feet to poke and prod at the cliff face, hoping to find a sloping incline that was easy enough for her battered body to handle. She leaned forward to peer through her legs, hoping to spot a jutting edge close enough to use as leverage for shifting her body around and down the side of the face, but—

A flash of vertigo.

A sudden shock of pain.

And the world collapsed around her.

.

..

...

..

.

It was disconcerting when her eyes fluttered open and she couldn't quite figure out if she was dead or alive.

It was even more disconcerting when her eyes opened to a dark nothingness. For a panicked moment, she thought she had lost her vision, lifting her hands to blindly touch her eyelids, but then realized she could faintly see the outline of her fingers. The last she remembered, the sun was slowly rising, and now it looked as though night had arrived once more.

_How long was I out?_

She tried to lift her head to look around and gasped as colors exploded behind her eyes_. _Her entire body _throbbed_ in that one instant, from the tips of her blistering feet to the top of her head, which felt as though someone had taken a wooden mallet to it. She slowly tilted her head to the side, wincing as her neck protested, and saw she was lying awkwardly on her back with her legs thrown off to the side. Her left calf dangled precariously off the ledge by her knee.

Shifting her body in miniscule movements, she was able to use her arms, which were strangely okay beyond the soreness they had retained from her earlier upward climb, to prop her back against the rock face. Besides her neck, which was most likely sore from lying still in an unnaturally twisted position for hours, her back, which ached in ways she didn't know existed, and the slight trouble she had breathing around ribs that felt as though they had gone from bruised to fractured, she was in one piece, and her parts seemed to be moving as they should. She supposed she should be grateful that she was alive, but gazing at the night sky and its sliver of a moon, she couldn't help but feel the misery and guilt wash over her again, compounded by her recently acquired aches and pains.

A fleeting thought—_why am I still alive?—_crossed her mind, and she curiously chanced a glance up and saw a familiar ridge that looked to be fifteen feet above where she currently sat. She hazily remembered peering through her legs on the edge of the cliff as she searched for a foothold or path that could take her down to the water below, and realized with a start that she had probably leaned too far and ended up flipping and tumbling head over heels flat onto her back. She recalled being told about a young boy who had died from injuries sustained falling at a similar distance but couldn't muster up any feelings of gratefulness.

All of a sudden, she also remembered hearing from—she clenched her eyes shut angrily and willed the tears away—she remembered _hearing_ that when dogs neared their time of passing, they knew, and searched for a private place to curl up and die. She looked around on her miserable hunk of a ledge and saw, to her surprise, that there was a slight opening in the rock face to her right. She shifted her body painstakingly over to what appeared to be a crawl space into the side of the mountain. It looked wide enough to accommodate her as well as deep enough for her to crawl a good ways before…

She shook her head, willing the thoughts away.

But now that she had seen it, she couldn't help the curiosity—the one non-morbid emotion she seemed to still be able to experience, it seemed—from bubbling up and swelling over, persuading her to just poke her head in and see where the niche led. She briefly entertained the thought of snakes or some other slithery mountain dweller leering up unexpectedly and attacking her before she could even scream and shifted her feet towards the entrance instead. She pushed herself through slowly feet-first, and was able to sit up a little once her head cleared the passage.

More than a niche and less than a tunnel, she found the little passageway did continue on, disappearing around a slight bend. It wasn't small enough to be uncomfortable or claustrophobic, but she still felt somewhat vulnerable, nevertheless. She flipped herself around headfirst, mentally chasing away the thought of rabid reptiles and small horrors, and crawled forward on her hands, trying her best to keep as much pressure as possible off of her overworked, bruised knees. She arched her back slightly and instantly regretted it. With a slight hiss, she straightened again and started as her voice echoed back around her, remnants of each trailing one after the other in rapid succession. Her knees were aching badly; she gritted her teeth and swung her arms above her head, and was surprised to find that there was enough room to stand. Rising on trembling legs, she pursued the small passageway using the fading starlight that reflected off of small shiny spots embedded in the rock. As she rounded the bend, darkness robbed her once more, and she resorted to stretching her arms in front of her and walking slowly.

The passage must have expanded outwards because her fingertips wafted only through cool air on either side of her, losing the comforting feeling of guidance. She continued on, fancying for a passing moment that she was walking into the heart of the mountain, for she must have been walking for hours and hours…

She tripped suddenly, over a cluster of loose shale and rubble, and reoriented herself by holding her arms straight out on either side of her. She could hear the pebbles flying, but strangely she did not hear any corresponding noise that indicated they had dropped or bounced somewhere. Closing her eyes, since she could barely see anything, having long left the faint starlight and moon sliver behind, she cocked her head slightly and listened intently. _There!_

It was faint, but she had heard the scattered splashes as the pebbles fell into some body of water. It had sounded some distance away, and since she hadn't sent them flying that far, she figured she was yet again standing on the edge of something.

It was her destiny to stand on the precipice. One push and she would wobble and lean one way or another, eventually losing her balance enough to go careening down one side. But she supposed that analogy wasn't quite right. After all, most precipices did not have a _right_ side and a _wrong_ side, so whichever way you fell should logically make no moral difference; only that one fall was longer than the other. But for her, she always seemed to topple over into the endless Wrong Side, the side that brought tears and misery and pain and misfortune to her and her loved ones, as few as they numbered, while she continued to plummet out of control.

She realized the path she was mentally treading and tried to redirect her thoughts, but it was getting harder and harder to push against the dam and expect it to hold everything back from crushing and overwhelming her with its force, especially when her defenses were shoddy to begin with. She concentrated instead on the faint trembling of her hands and lifted one to press firmly against her chest, hoping, perhaps somewhat futilely, to ease the ache that lay beneath. Taking a deep breath, feeling as grounded as she could hope to be, she continued on her way and realized quite abruptly, that she had somehow forgotten she was standing on the edge until her right foot stepped forward and encountered nothing, sending her careening into the invisible unknown.

She experienced maybe a couple of seconds, but what seemed like a small eternity, of exhilarating, dizzying, mind-numbing free-falling that ended with a resounding _splash_ that echoed throughout her entire body.

This time, she did not have the fortune to pass out for hours and wake up in one piece. Instead, she plunged through the surface of what appeared to be an underground lake and, for the first time in hours, felt pure fear seeping into her very bones as she sank wide-eyed, able to feel the water being dispelled around her and creeping into her nose and mouth, but unable to see anything substantial. Her body finally reverted to its natural response of _keeping her alive,_ and she gave one hard, painful kick that propelled her upwards, kicking and splashing the rest of the way desperately to the top. Her head broke the surface with a loud gasp as she sucked in cool air and coughed uncontrollably. She turned this way and that, kicking up shallow ripples that she could hear but not see, straining her eyes to make something, anything out of this abysmal darkness.

They were supposed to be her most prized possession, these eyes, and yet they were absolutely worthless in her time of need. _Or,_ she thought despairingly, _it must be me that's worthless since these eyes complement so many others…_

Those thoughts and many others kept swirling around at dizzying speeds in her head as she pushed her body in one direction. All that existed was her heavy breathing and rhythmic splashing as she clawed her way through the freezing water.

Eventually she accidentally slapped her hand on what felt like a rocky shoreline and started before scrabbling at it with two hands. Painstakingly, she pulled her resisting body out of the lake and laid panting and shaking from her body's sudden realization of cavernous subterranean temperatures. Pushing herself into a standing position, she yanked her waterlogged jacket off of her small frame and trembled as the metal mesh netting of her top chilled in response to the freezing water and air and stuck uncomfortably to her skin.

On teetering legs, she managed to take two baby steps before something—or someone, judging by the unnaturally warm object—slammed into her, twisting and pinning her arm behind her back and settling the piercing cold of a kunai tip clumsily against her throat. Her jacket hit the cavern floor with a noiseless plop.

"Who are you?"

Somewhere in the fogginess that had settled in her head, she recognized exhaustion and edginess within the gruff voice, yet couldn't find the will to fight back or summon enough fear to react.

"Hy…Hyuuga…" she muttered indiscernibly before slumping against the figure. Her head fell back against what she later decided to be a chest, and the last thing she saw as her eyes rolled upwards were two sinister red eyes.

Perhaps she had wandered too deep into…

_the cave_.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

Many apologies to those who have read this piece. I've updated chapter one, so please give it a re-go. :) Chapter two will be coming out in a week, following this post. Trying my best to stay ahead of myself, what with my three-year hiatuses and such.

_So what's changed?_ Actually, quite a lot. …Well, of the writing, that is. The plot is pretty much the same except the beginning is more fleshed out.

I will warn you up front: there is not going to be a lot of plot in this one. I wrote this story mainly to play around with character development and to test the boundaries of characters' personalities and their probable emotions in a high-stress, high-emotion scenario. But because this is Sasuke and Hinata, those two crazy kids who have technically never even talked in canon, there has to be the minimal amount of plot to function.

The necessary background you need to know for now is that it is AU starting from the point where Sasuke has fought Itachi (the finale, mind you).

Just for fun, I was inspired by scenes from two different subjects, one of which is Naruto canon and mentioned in some detail, and the other of which is a very famous book. Can you guess what those scenes are, and what inspired them?

Until then…

Comments are always appreciated.


End file.
